OFFICIAL M17: Revised New Player Experience

ncoreadev · July 2019

The new character tutorial has been revised to improve visual quality and gameplay experience. The early quest flow thru Tower District has also been revisited to clarify quest flow, tune balance issues, fix a few long standing bugs, and in some cases upgrade the environment. If you take this opportunity to create a new hero and play them thru level 16, please share your feedback and any bugs you might find in this thread.

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Formatting Your Feedback and Bugs
For posting feedback and bugs, please follow the following format to ensure your feedback and bugs are seen clearly and processed in a timely manner, thank you!

Type: Bug/Feedback (Please only choose one)
If you are listing a bug please have this text in RED, if you are posting an opinion or feedback please use CYAN. If you are replying to another user's post, asking a question, or just engaging in general discussion, please do not color your posts, general discussion is welcome and we will read all of it, regardless of color! You can use BBCode to color your text:

<font color=cyan>This text will display in cyan.</font>
<font color=red>This text will display in red.</font>

Examples:
Bug: On the bridge, the Harbinger fell off the side!

Feedback: On the bridge, the Harbinger was too easy to kill.

arazith07 · July 2019

The Vault quest to rescue Sybella and check on the crown of Neverwinter is repeatable.
Makos usually just stands and does nothing in the bridge instance.

shurato2099 · July 2019

Bug:The Vault quest to rescue Sybella and check on the crown of Neverwinter appears to be repeatable, however, accepting it from Sgt. Knox sent me right back into the tutorial.

Feedback:Overall, I like the new tutorial a bit better but I hope that the cutscenes and other appearances of the dracolich are not in their final form as the creature is completely silent even when it clearly should be roaring at Makos.

hustin1 · July 2019

BUG: no actual artisan applicants when doing the tutorial

I started an alt on the workshop and reached the point where you are told that there are four new applicants. However when I click the button to view them, no applicants appear in the window.

I also copied over an alt who already had the workshop set up and no new applicants appear even though the UI says there are several of them.

hustin1 · July 2019

Six years in and Deekin Street is still a mess? Fire the head of the Streets Department. He's incompetent.

Overall, though, I like what you did with the textures in PE. They're gorgeous.

hustin1 · July 2019

It's hard to get in a single shot, but the horizon lighting doesn't look right with the sun that high in the sky. It shouldn't be that blown out along the horizon, I think.

hustin1 · July 2019

Checking out Tower District. The lighting along the ground and the rocks seems off, somehow. It's hard to put my finger on it. It feels like the ground might be lacking contrast, and the rocks have a bluish, otherworldly look.

Also, with the wall breach sealed, some quest dialogue from Captain Janros might need to be changed.

What happened to the lore scroll by the orc with the axe in its back? ("Definitely NOT a love letter")? That was a cool easter egg. Thinking along those lines, you might want to put a clicky somewhere on the fallen tavern -- a lore entry explaining why the piece that used to be on the ground is now hovering overhead might be a good idea.

dheffernan · July 2019

Attempting to run the repeated version of "Theft of the Crown" resulted in my Gith Ranger being booted back into the tutorial....

...from which he could not leave, because the "Equip Your Gear" step wouldn't satisfy even if I took off everything and only equipped the newbie items.

auron · July 2019

NM user error

greywynd · July 2019

While you're smoothing out the leveling game experience why don't you smooth all the missing dungeons back into their slots where they belong?

phoenira · July 2019

I have copied a character that I once made on live which only started the old tutorial but never finished it and was still at level 1. The copied char on preview has the quest to equip gear, but I already had the gear and the quest does not trigger at all, even if I unequip all the stuff and only equip the 'new' stuff and I am stuck there essentially and cannot progress.

The mentioned character appeared in the first part of the new tutorial but on the hills where players probably are not supposed to be. I had to kill the character to 'spawn' correctly. The very first part of the tutorial should be adjusted to characters which have never finished the tutorial so they can advance correctly.

obsidiancran3 · July 2019

So far I have played through to the end of Black Lake, over all the experience is improved and a few minor adjustments in the removal of some enemies has been good.

Issues I saw that are not explicitly bugs.

1) Makos just doesn't fit on the Bridge. He's a powerful enough guy that he one shots a Dracolich and then binds its soul in a few seconds (which is cool), but then he cannot even kill a zombie. Then a completely ranged guy he foolishly charges towards Valindra like he plans to club her with that torch he randomly produces. Please put poor old Wilfred back, he makes much more sense in the bridge sequence.

2) The Supply Sergeant seems pretty sad about you saving Makos on the Bridge, instead of letting him die like poor old Wilfred.

3) when you reach the last room of the Vault the Guardian is standing around doing nothing in front of the ruined door. He should be pounding on it and it should come down just after the thieves flee.

4) When you go to Blacklake the first 2 quests include one that gives you 3 potions.. at this point I had 10 in my potion bar just from the freebie leveling boxes, and I hadn't done much looting to pick up the ones in various places along the way.

5) When you hand in Finding Honor, Knox tells you that Gothwain went to Blacklake, then instead of sending you after Gothwain only offers you a replacement for the mount you lost... The mount quest also only gives you 1 Insignia, meaning you cannot activate the Insignia Bonus on the free mount.

6) Emira doesn't ask you to recover stolen goods until after you have followed the clues. Its better when you can take these 2 quests together as they lead naturally to similar places.

You also still get a second free mount when you open the second leveling gift box.

A suggestion:
When you get your Fashion items from the Supply Sergeant would be a good place to put a tutorial on the Appearance system, as Fashion appearance changes are still free.

1) You get given a horse when you first go to the Vault, but then when you leave not only is everything magically fixed and back to normal PE, your horse is magically gone as well. The loss of the horse is particularly annoying as the quest for the fashion gear is a long walk without Shadowslip.

2) When you hand in the Vault quest, Knox immediately offers it and the quest that follows it. This new version also offers the old belt reward still, which you do not get from the new version.

3) The "You've Got Mail" notification appears when you enter the Sewers, but the mail arrived some time before that.

4) When you return to PE from Blacklake (I reached level 10 handing the quest in) you get given The Seer and Invoking the Gods. Both of these quests feel really out of position now that Knox has been relocated. Also neither of them could be completed at level 10. The Seer only offers her store and the Invocation NPC tells you to come back at level 11.

The Warlock new player experience is problematic. I only ever saw Lesser Curse appear when I was fighting Karzov and the Guardian. This is because Killing Flames pretty much kills everything you use it on other than Karzov and the Guardian in the Vault. This means that Vampiric Embrace's heal never procs and that Dreadtheft has nothing to renew.

Dreadtheft would be much improved if it simply lost the Curse Synergy. This would trigger Lesser Curse and give Warlocks a low level power that had synergy with Curse Bite. Alternatively swap it with Arms of Hadar or Firey Bolt so Soul Weaver has 2 AoE Powers that work with Curse Bite when not needed as a dedicated healer. Then still remove Curse Synergy from Dreadtheft and up its tic damage a bit as a dedicated DPS power.

Otherwise the unlock timing of powers is much better than in prior iterations compared to quest progression. The only seemingly hard part was actually defending Makos due to a lack of AoE options, but that will not be a Warlock specific problem and Killing Flame's summoning the Soul Puppet made that quite smooth as a Warlock.

jimmypdt · July 2019

1) You get a green mount when you first arrive in PE. But once you finish the Vault quest you no longer have the mount. (It just disappears)
2) Once you finish the vault quest you get the quest to get your first pants and shirt. Once you hand that quest in you get another quest to go into the vault once more. (this is the same quest to find the crown as before) If you enter the vault again you are sent to the starting zone (level one after you create a character) and cannot progress through the tutorial again since you are told to equip the starting items again but it doesn't register that you do so you cannot continue.
3) At level 10 you get the quest to learn how to invoke but she wont let you until you are level 11.
4) At level 10 you get the quest to go to Sybella but she wont do anything for you (for the seer campaign) Until level 15.

Random issues:
1) In the tower district the quest rods, staves and wands is no longer there. The tree the book is beside is floating and so is the book.
2) The new skirmish Tower of the mad mage (TOMM) is in the RAQ section. This causes the RAQ section to have a Item Level Requirement of 24,000 to queue up for RAQ. No one will be able to queue for RAQ till they unlock TOMM and people who are under 24,000 IL will never be able to queue for RAQ even with the skirmish unlocked.

Thats all I've found so far. I wish you the best.

wofulsnail171 · July 2019

As already mentioned above the intro quest is repeatable. One thing i noticed there is that it starts to load the vault, but then the loading bar decreases again and loads the neverwinter field. From there i teleported back to pe, which complets the quest and i can turn it in. (this will also lead to a mount bug where i cant use my mount anymore until i buy a new one).
Now if i dont have the repeatable quest i can go to sybella without any problem, but even if i have the seer quest active she refuses to talk to me and i cant start the introduction campaign.

tecmyst · July 2019

Hi!
I like the refreshed version of your intro quest, but...
- Makos is too powerful and smart to just rush on Valindra like a total newb, that was the Wilfred role and he should maintain it further (beside it's nice touch on Dread Ring to see him undead as a reminder of his failure, why to change that?)
-Monsters lvl 6 on half Blacklake District map are too powerful, they got something like 10 times more HP than they should have
-Blacklake Sewers 1st introductionary trap can't be targeted and disarmed (after opening the hatch)
-small thing but please switch the esc menu order (Help with Change Character) so after hiting esc our mouse will hover over Change Character button for faster switching our toons (invoke etc.)

- 2nd time we get quest 'The theft of the crown' and try to enter Vault will send us to begining of the intro quest and there we are stuck forever (?) cause equping gear not working and we can't move forward

Played with Gith Rogue, very nice experienc overall.

wofulsnail171 · July 2019

Once you get your welcoming mail from cryptic, you get a gift that contains various dyes. As most one-color-dyes are now in the default colors, you cant use them. This can be really confusing for a new playert. Maybe remove dyes we already have by default (also from the tradebar store) and change them to one or two random color sets.

liadan1984 · July 2019

tecmyst said:

- 2nd time we get quest 'The theft of the crown' and try to enter Vault will send us to begining of the intro quest and there we are stuck forever (?) cause equping gear not working and we can't move forward

I've read this multiple times, and still made the mistake of entering the vault.... ugh!
Might be faster to delete the toon and remake it, rather than wait for Friday's patch for a possible fix to this.

martelis1981 · July 2019

remove the crit severity of the enemies implemented in the last patch, it is too much for new players in the low levels

arazith07 · July 2019

martelis1981 said:
remove the crit severity of the enemies implemented in the last patch, it is too much for new players in the low levels

It's not the crit severity that is the issue, all critter damage and HP was increased. Devs were made aware and have said that was not the intended result but that they could not get into the office to fix until Monday.

hustin1 · July 2019

I'm not sure that the change to the bank tellers is such a hot idea. I keep thinking of when you do Maze Engine quests. You can barely see Bruenor Battlehammer in the crush of players clustered around him. I think it will be far worse when everyone has to go to the same bank teller. Remember, there will also be mounts, companions, and vanity pets in the mix -- I can't see this scaling well. You might be better off going back to the way things are, shrinking the size of the bank front door, deleting two inner support columns, and having two general bank tellers on each side instead of just one. There's a reason why banks in the real world have multiple tellers arranged in a row to service multiple customers at once.

fdsakhfduewhfiuf · July 2019

I cannot test the introductory quests because I'm not able to create a new character. I already have eight characters on preview and there is no way of getting more character slots.

auron · July 2019

Tower District

The relic hunt contest appears to be missing from the tower district since the map redesign also, there is a treasure chest stuck in a wall near where Gaelen is

Eye of gurrmish warders are too hard to kill so it is impossible for a vanilla player to kill them to complete the quest (enimies being unkillable is not isolated to wardens but this is where i noticed it most))

Orc assult skirmish no longer upscales players to the appropriate level

auron · July 2019

Intro

Not a bug but some feedback, overall the new intor is ok but as others have said, Makos is unsuited to be your partner in this quest. Celest or Linkletter might be better if you don't want to make new models.

aimsies · July 2019

hustin1 said:
I'm not sure that the change to the bank tellers is such a hot idea. I keep thinking of when you do Maze Engine quests. You can barely see Bruenor Battlehammer in the crush of players clustered around him. I think it will be far worse when everyone has to go to the same bank teller. Remember, there will also be mounts, companions, and vanity pets in the mix -- I can't see this scaling well. You might be better off going back to the way things are, shrinking the size of the bank front door, deleting two inner support columns, and having two general bank tellers on each side instead of just one. There's a reason why banks in the real world have multiple tellers arranged in a row to service multiple customers at once.

THIS.

Every time I use the actual bank in protectors I always go to whichever teller had less players huddling around it - and have been doing this since I first started playing years ago. I can't count how many times I tried to choose the personal bank and ended up on a player menu instead and had to be careful not to trade/inspect/ignore/what have you.

Also...pulling the tellers out from behind the barred windows kind of kills the illusion of having the physical bank in PE. If you're going away from the one physical structure you might as well just throw a bunch of bank vaults around PE like Mailboxes and be done with it.

hustin1 · July 2019

aimsies said:

hustin1 said:
I'm not sure that the change to the bank tellers is such a hot idea. I keep thinking of when you do Maze Engine quests. You can barely see Bruenor Battlehammer in the crush of players clustered around him. I think it will be far worse when everyone has to go to the same bank teller. Remember, there will also be mounts, companions, and vanity pets in the mix -- I can't see this scaling well. You might be better off going back to the way things are, shrinking the size of the bank front door, deleting two inner support columns, and having two general bank tellers on each side instead of just one. There's a reason why banks in the real world have multiple tellers arranged in a row to service multiple customers at once.
THIS.

Every time I use the actual bank in protectors I always go to whichever teller had less players huddling around it - and have been doing this since I first started playing years ago. I can't count how many times I tried to choose the personal bank and ended up on a player menu instead and had to be careful not to trade/inspect/ignore/what have you.

Also...pulling the tellers out from behind the barred windows kind of kills the illusion of having the physical bank in PE. If you're going away from the one physical structure you might as well just throw a bunch of bank vaults around PE like Mailboxes and be done with it.

Indeed, it's not as if we don't all live in the real world. If we drive up to a bank and walk in, we generally know what to expect. There will be a seating area, an area with desks and chairs for consulting with individual managers, a row of tellers, and a passage to where the vault lies. It's been this way for a couple of centuries. Foss mentioned a "pain point" as driving the change, but I would submit that the change itself would be the pain point as it deviates from what pretty much everyone in the world would expect a bank to look like. The layout of a bank in the real world is a functional one and exists for reasons of security, efficiency, and convenience. Why would an ingame bank be any different?

Unknown · July 2019

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agnustheholy · July 2019

<font color=red>Harbringer has different model in the cutscene than the one you actually fight. </font>

annihilator · July 2019

Been wanting to ask why the craft level starts at 10 and you don't get the quest to start till level 20??

ncoreadev · July 2019

Thank you everyone for your bug reports and feedback! We have been acting on a number of them and seriously considering your suggestions.

Keep 'em coming!

adinosii · July 2019

leyra171#4878 said:
Once you get your welcoming mail from cryptic, you get a gift that contains various dyes. As most one-color-dyes are now in the default colors, you cant use them. This can be really confusing for a new playert. Maybe remove dyes we already have by default (also from the tradebar store) and change them to one or two random color sets.

Or just make sure the random dyes we get are just two of the "black, white, pink" set. All other single color dyes should just be removed, as they are utterly useless.

Unknown · July 2019

This content has been removed.

OFFICIAL M17: Revised New Player Experience

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Tower District

Intro